Suzhou industrial park to strike while the iron is hot

Following the 9th Suzhou Industrial Park Joint Steering Council meeting earlier last week, Committee members from the Suzhou municipality and representatives of the Suzhou industrial park (SIP) from both countries convened at the Economic Cooperation Forum on Suzhou and SIP held a the Shangri-la Hotel Friday.

The event was also attended by representatives from various businesses and institutions.

The SIP has been a long-standing collaboration between the Chinese and Singaporean government for the last 12 years. The Suzhou municipality and the Singaporean government have been working together in the development of the city's infrastructure and new technology industrial clusters, including electronics and information technology, precise engineering, biopharmaceuticals and new materials.

To date, the park has attracted the likes of Nokia, Siemens Philips, with a total of about 26000 world renown companies, 49% form the U.S. and Europe, 18% from Japan and Korea, 6% from Singapore and 22% from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan region.

"Suzhou is ranked first in China, in terms of contractual foreign investments, second in terms of total industrial output, third in hi-tech exports and fifth in GDP…Suzhou Hi-tech industries have achieved sales revenue exceeding US$52.6 billion…and its electronics IT product output value reached US$ 51.8 billion accounting for 12.3% of mainland China," Yan Li, Mayor of Suzhou said at the forum.

In his speech, Singapore's Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Lee Yi Shyan said that this joint project will focus on three key sectors—Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Logistics and water and environmental services.

To achieve this goal, various policies have been erected to facilitate and create incentives for business to locate in SIP.

R&D organizations will enjoy grants and subsidies for offices or land; financial support and subsidies for project costs are available for technical cooperation projects. A support plan of Venture and Innovation's Startup subsidies for research programs are also in place.

Enterprises in the integrated circuit design, software development, bio-science and animation game industries will be entitled to favorable treatment on business income tax after their first profitable year, and also enjoy rewards for ownership of patents to new products developed by the company.

Intellectual property rights have also been given priority in the park's agenda. The Intellectual Property Right Protection (IPRP) Fund is established to subsidize enterprise and individual patent applicants and reward applicants of multiple patents, particularly Chinese enterprises. The SIP IPRP centre will also offer a range of IPR related services from patent application to dispute settlement.

"We must strike while the iron is still hot," Chinese Ambassador to Singapore, Zhang Xiaokang, said in her speech at the symposium.

This is the consensual sentiment within the SIP committee for both countries about the prospects for SIP. Zhang added that SIP is "a model of the win-win cooperation between China and Singapore" and confidence is high that the joint project will propel reforms in China towards greater strength in the technology and knowledge-based economy.